Concepts

Slips

Reusable templates you build on a canvas — they turn tasks and data into an image, a printout, or an action.

Slips are Todebaran's most distinctive feature — and its most flexible. A slip is a reusable template you design on a small visual canvas by wiring blocks together. Resolving a slip produces a receipt-style document you can export as an image or print — and because a slip can run logic and reach out, executing one can also do things, not just show them.

You don't need a printer

Printing is only one of the things a slip can do. Every slip can be exported as an image, and a slip can also run purely to perform an action. The thermal-printer details live in their own section — Printing & thermal printers.

The canvas#

A slip is a little pipeline: you drop blocks onto a canvas and connect them. Blocks come in two kinds.

Output blocks shape what the slip produces — Text, Image, QR Code, HTML, a Website screenshot, separators, spacing, and a paper Cut.
Helper nodes feed those outputs with data and logic — a Task node (your task's own fields as variables), an AI Prompt, Constants, Random values, Conditionals, a JSON parser, and JavaScript and Shell blocks that run code.

An output from one block becomes a {{variable}} you can drop into blocks downstream. For the complete catalog, see the Slip blocks reference.

More than printing#

Two things make a slip useful even if you never own a printer:

Export as an image. From a slip's preview you can export the result as an image and use it however you like — save it, share it, drop it somewhere.
Run actions. Resolving a slip actually executes its blocks: a Shell command runs, a snippet of JavaScript runs, a Website block loads and screenshots a URL, an AI Prompt calls your model, an image is generated. So a slip can be a small automation — fetch live data, hit an endpoint, run a script — and then print, export, or simply do the work.

Code blocks run on your computer

The JavaScript and Shell blocks execute real code on your computer when a slip resolves. Only run slips you built or trust.

Slips and tasks#

Slips connect back to your tasks in a few ways:

Attach a slip to a task, so acting on that task uses your template.
Set one slip as the default for tasks, used whenever a task has none of its own.
Run on complete — a task with a slip runs it the moment you complete the task. Because a slip can perform actions, this turns "complete a task" into "do a thing": print a ticket, run a script, log somewhere.
Generate a task from a slip, pre-attached and ready.

Because a slip is a reusable template, you can save one out as a file and bring it back — into another folder, or onto another device. (This is different from exporting the result as an image, above: that's a finished picture, not a reusable template.)

Export — select a slip and press ⌘E (or Export from its menu) to save it as a .json file. This captures the whole design — every block, its wiring and its settings — but not where the slip sat in your folders.
Import — choose Import Slip from the slip list's folder menu, or drag .json files onto the slip list (you'll see Drop JSON to import). Each file becomes a new slip, and you can bring in several at once.

Images travel by reference

If a slip uses an image from your file library, the export points at that file rather than baking it in — so an imported slip shows the image only when that file is present (it is on your own synced devices). Images from a URL or generated by AI always come through.

Community Slips#

Slips are also shared publicly. Community Slips is a gallery of slips other people built — browse it for ideas, or download one and make it your own. Nothing there needs a printer either: plenty of the slips are there to be exported as an image or to run something.

Getting one#

From a slip's page you can either Open in Todebaran, which hands the slip straight to the app and asks where to put it, or Download slip to get the same .json file and import it yourself, exactly as in Sharing slips above.

Read what it does before you run it#

Because a slip can run code, every slip in the gallery lists what it touches when it resolves — the commands it runs, the addresses it reaches, whether it calls a model. That list is read from the file itself, not written by the author, and it is on the slip's page before you download anything.

The gallery is reviewed, not vetted line by line

Every submission is read by a person before it appears, but a slip you download still runs on your computer with your permissions. Treat the What it does list as the thing worth reading, and skip anything whose reason for reaching out you cannot see.

Anyone with an account can share a slip. You upload the exported .json, add a title, a category and a screenshot of what it prints, and it goes into review. Once it is published it carries your author name, which you set once and which changes on everything you have shared.

Authors can publish new versions later. The published version stays live until a reviewer has read the new one, and nobody's installed copy changes on its own — taking an update is always the reader's choice.

Slip history#

Every time a slip runs, the result is saved to Slip History, so you can reopen exactly what it produced without running it again.

Where to go next#

Building a slip — design one step by step.
Slip blocks reference — every block and node in detail.
Printing & thermal printers — send a slip to a receipt printer.
Community Slips — slips other people have shared, ready to download.